Average total cost for a U.S. eighty-year-old to live out the rest of his or her days on a luxury cruise ship: $230,497

Average cost to live them out in an assisted-living facility: $228,075

Estimated total federal assistance for which Wal-Mart employees were eligible last year: $2,500,000,000

Estimated number of young Christians in 1995 who had pledged to wait until marriage for sex: 2,500,000

Estimated percentage who waited: 12

Average amount the Bush Administration has spent per year on contracts with P.R. firms : $62,500,000

Average amount spent during the second term of the Clinton Administration: $32,000,000

Amount the Department of Homeland Security will spend this year directing research at U.S. universities: $45,000,000

Percentage of U.S. high-school students who believe news stories should require “government approval” before publication: 36

Percentage of owners of private businesses in China who are members of the Communist Party: 34

Percentage of all adults in China who are: 5

Average number of East Germans who died each year trying to cross to West Germany: 18

Average number of Mexicans who have died each year since 2000 trying to cross to the United States: 407

Percentage of Republicans who say they would vote for Bush over George Washington: 62

Minimum number of U.S. adults who think Bush is “liberal” or “very liberal”: 11,800,000

Chance that a U.S. adult thinks a “conservative” is someone who supports affirmative action: 1 in 4

Number of female U.S. soldiers disciplined this year for mud-wrestling at an Iraqi prison camp: 2

Year that Boise, Idaho, banned full nudity in public unless it had “serious artistic merit”: 2001

Number of nights each week that a Boise strip club now distributes sketch pads and pencils: 2

Revenue from Iraqi oil sales that the CPA could not account for, according to a 2005 audit: $8,800,000,000

Estimated number of U.S. intelligence reports on Iraq that were based on a single defector: 100 [Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the U.S. Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (Washington)]

Number of times the defector had ever been interviewed by U.S. intelligence agents: 0

Average amount the Bush Administration has spent per year on contracts with P.R. firms : $62,500,000

Average amount spent during the second term of the Clinton Administration: $32,000,000

Amount the Department of Homeland Security will spend this year directing research at U.S. universities: $45,000,000

Percentage of U.S. high-school students who believe news stories should require “government approval” before publication: 36

Minimum number of ExxonMobil-funded groups that have disputed mainstream scientific findings on climate change: 31

Number of America’s nine “Founding Fathers” who denied the divinity of Jesus: 7

Minimum number of illegitimate children had by the nine: 9

Number of killed or captured suspects reported so far by U.S. media to be Al Qaeda’s “number 3” man : 4

Minimum number of people convicted on “terrorism-related charges” since 2001, according to Alberto Gonzales in April : 200

Actual number convicted on charges related to terrorism or national security : 39

Number of Iraqi troops that have been “trained and equipped,” according to President Bush in April : 150,000

Number that the U.S. military considers ready to deploy independently : 1,500

Increase in the total value of U.S. residential property since 2000, expressed as a percentage of GDP : 60

Number of consecutive years that the value of housing in Japan has dropped since its housing bubble burst : 14

Months after his 2004 defeat that Ralph Nader said the Democratic Party had made him feel “like a nigger” : 7

Number of anti-globalization protesters who were tortured last year by Mexican officials : 19

Stipend that a CIA scholarship program gives annually to undisclosed undergraduates for overseas “fieldwork” : $25,000

Total U.S. spending on poppy eradication and other antidrug efforts in Afghanistan last year: $780,000,000
Amount it would have cost to purchase the country’s entire 2004 poppy crop: $600,000,000

Average estimated salary, in today’s dollars, of the dads on the ten top-rated TV shows of the 1950s: $77,000[Salary.com (Needham, Mass.)]

Average for the dads on today’s ten top-rated shows: $207,000

Minimum number of centuries in prison served by U.S. convicts for crimes of which DNA evidence later exonerated them: 19

Number of toilet seats at the EU Parliament building in Brussels that a TV station had tested for cocaine: 46

Number that tested positive: 41

Number of U.S. terrorism trials brought before a jury since September 11, 2001 : 1 [U.S. Department of Justice ]

Number of terrorism convictions resulting : 2

Number of them dismissed in June due to a "pattern of mistakes" by the prosecution : 2

Revenue generated by Halliburton under CEO Dick Cheney from business deals with Iraq under Saddam Hussein : $30,000,000

Days after the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that Dick Cheney married, securing a draft deferment : 22

Somewhere in Harper's Index they mentioned that the US has claimed three times to have killed the number three al Qaida leader. Imagine my surprise today when I logged on and the MSN news healined: Officials: CIA missile strike kills al-Qaida No. 3.

Gosh it's deja vu all over again.

"Preparing mentally, the most important thing is, if you aren't doing it for the love of it, then don't do it." - Benny Urquidez